


Reverse Defenestration

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Slash, Slice of Life, Todd Brotzman is Bad at Feelings, honestly you can read it either way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23865229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: Todd tries to have a word with Dirk about an ongoing tendency to break into his room through the window despite the fact that they literally live in the same building.
Relationships: Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently
Comments: 30
Kudos: 96





	Reverse Defenestration

**Author's Note:**

> Up to the reader whether you want to read this as pre-slash (and Todd is terrible at hiding crushes) or ongoing slash (and Todd is terrible at communication).

"You know we own this building, right?"

"Technically, Todd, I think you'll find that _Farah_ owns the building," Dirk says, with that vocal swagger which is either really hot or really annoying depending entirely on what mood Todd's in. Right now, he's angry, which is normal, so it's annoying, which is also normal (with a very normal side of hot).

"I know she owns the building. Wasn't sure whether you did." After all, Dirk is being pretty generous of spirit if he calls it 'our' agency. While it is Dirk's name on the sign, and Todd gets that it's a whole lifetime ambition trauma thing, Todd also knows an ego trip when he sees one. Honestly, good for Dirk. Todd's met genuinely selfless people and he didn't trust them at all. "But we all have keys, yeah?"

Dirk produces a set of keys from somewhere – possibly some sort of pocket dimension solely used for key storage, because otherwise Todd has no idea how he can carry them in jeans that tight without showing any sign of it. Skinny jeans take skill and talent to wear, he appreciates that (he _really_ appreciates it), but some things just defy natural laws. Like Dirk. Or the fact that his keyring is almost entirely made of fluorescent fuzzy nightmares which mean that nobody should be able to look directly at it.

Todd's key is just that: a key, shoved in whichever jeans he's wearing that day. Sometimes he has to go through his wardrobe (or the pile of clothes on the floor) to find it. That is the most mundane thing in Todd's life, and he's okay with that.

Apparently Todd is taking too long to respond – Dirk's jeans require a lot of mental processing – because Dirk cocks his head to the side and says, "Why do you ask, Todd?" Todd just thought 'Dirk' then 'cock' and now he has to keep his face very still. "And why are your eyes doing that?"

"My eyes aren't doing anything," Todd lies, waving a hand dismissively in front of them as if that'll make some sort of optical illusion to shield him. "Thing is, you have your keys. On you."

"Always," Dirk says with a sunny smile, which is to say that he smiles and he is Dirk.

"So you can just...open the door. Get in the building whenever you want to."

"That is what keys are for, yes."

"Then why – " Todd stops, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, the way Farah tells him to. He's nowhere near as good at it as her, or at least he assumes that’s why it never seems to work. "Dirk. Why do you keep climbing in my window?"

Dirk frowns, not angry or anything but as if Todd is just the silliest little person he's ever met in his life. (That's how Todd imagines the inner monologue goes, anyway.) "I don't climb in through your window."

"You literally did it last night." And every night for the last week, and a whole lot of nights before that. If it's going to be every single night then Todd figures he should probably at least try to get an explanation. It's got to the point where he's stopped throwing things and now thinks he shouldn't even bother closing his window. He’s been transported to some nineties sitcom where everybody just breaks in and out of each other's house all the time, and this isn't even a case thing so he can't assume it'll just stop after a few more near-death experiences.

"I...Hmm." Dirk is thinking; alternatively, Dirk is making a thinking face while some sort of hamster just spins around in a wheel behind his eyes. Todd's known quite a few people like that, where you can practically hear the hold music. Dated a lot of them, too. Thing is, Dirk _is_ clever? At least Todd thinks he is. He definitely never stops thinking, even if the stuff he thinks about is completely and utterly nonsensical in any situation other than the one that's always just about to happen.

After some more humming to himself, Dirk ventures back out into the conversation with, "As you've just said, Todd, the building doesn't belong to any one of us, and therefore 'your' room isn't _actually_ – "

"Dirk," Todd says flatly. "Why do you keep climbing in through the window of the room where I _sleep_."

Dirk pauses. "You never seem to be sleeping in there."

"Because some _asshole_ keeps _climbing in through my window_!" As much as Todd would dearly love to grab Dirk by the front of his jacket, he's trying to cut down on that after a few comments Amanda made after her last visit – the kind of comments you don't want to hear your little sister make, badass or not. Instead he just tries to focus all the energy he'd usually use for that into glaring. He could almost kid himself that Dirk draws back, just a little. "Seriously! My room has a door; our building has a whole lot of doors! What is your problem with doors?"

Todd just about holds back from the instinctive joke of asking whether Dirk's parents were killed by a door. You don't say stuff like that in front of Dirk. The best case scenario is that they actually were.

"I don't have a problem with doors," Dirk says, "I think there are very fine doors in the world, some of my best friends are doors – "

"Jesus Christ," Todd says, more by way of _stopping Dirk talking_ then out of any religious inclinations. The fact that he feels the need to elaborate on that inside his own head shows that Dirk's Dirkness is infectious and Todd clearly needs some sort of thought vaccine. Or thought bleach. Or just anything to clear out whatever is spinning madly in his head like he's eight years old in a dizziness competition with Amanda.

He does grab Dirk by the arms now. It’s just one of those things they do: they grab hold of each other. "Dirk. I get that you broke in through my window at the Ridgely – "

"'Breaking in' is something of an overstatement."

“ – because for some reason you didn't think you could just knock and you had this whole future vision of yourself telling yourself to go break into my apartment or something – "

"To be fair, what I actually said was that you were going to be my best friend, I admit I was a little hazy on the details but really I was very caught up in the moment and it's always better to try to preserve some measure of free will in predetermined time loops."

" - _oh my God why am I attracted to you_ – the point is that you don't have to do that anymore! You can just walk over to my room and knock on the door if you want to see me that badly!" A horrifying thought occurs to him, like ominous violin music in the woods. "Wait, does that mean you're actually leaving the building to break in?" It sounds ridiculous, but exactly the kind of ridiculous that Dirk would do. "Do you – Every night, do you go outside, round to my side, and then...do your thing to get yourself up to my window?" Dirk's relationship with gravity is one more thing that Todd really means to get into some time when events stop, well, eventuating.

Nothing about Dirk's expression is useful right now. Maybe Todd should be glad that he isn't looking incredibly guilty (mouth pursed with eyes flicking to the side like there's a script just to his right) or, worse, overly bright and fake happy to try to compensate (the kind of Stepford Wives face that haunts Todd's nightmares). Unfortunately, those are the things Todd can identify. He knows exactly what those mean, in Dirk's flipbook of expressions (from ecstatic through to Blackwing nothingness, and out the other side again). He doesn't know what to make of Dirk just blinking owlishly at him, exaggerated enough that he can almost hear those cartoon plink-plunk sounds.

It also doesn’t help that this is the longest Todd has known Dirk to go quiet without any actual Blackwing bullshit going on. It turns out Todd has no idea how to talk to Dirk when he's waiting for an answer and Dirk is giving him nothing. Apparently, he needs Dirk to be constantly talking over him or at least giving him some sort of input – or the universe giving input, that works too.

"Dirk?"

Dirk blinks a bit more rapidly, then shakes his head a little like he's trying to cleanse the Etch-a-Sketch of his brain. (That's an improvised metaphor but honestly Todd now needs to memorise it because it might be the closest he's ever going to get.) "Sorry, what were you saying, Todd?"

He's smiling politely and there's this incoherent screaming moment when Todd thinks he might have actually restored factory settings, before he realises that that's exactly the same way Dirk smiled when asking why Todd needed pills and okay, enough thinking, seriously.

"I was asking you whether you sneak out in the middle of the night to climb back in through my window," Todd says, much slower and less loud than before. He's not quite sure what's going on here but there's no Farah which, through some hideous twist of fate, leaves him as the responsible adult.

Dirk frowns as if this requires extensive thought. Oh God, what if it does? "No," he says, decisively. "I leave quite openly, before midnight. Farah's usually leaving at the same time."

This possibly means some distressing things about when Farah leaves – isn't she supposed to be the one who's supposed to be professional? – until Todd remembers 1) that Farah has a lot of courses so she can't leave late unless there's a case and 2) the sort of time Dirk falls through the window usually. "You can just follow me to my room, you know."

"Well, that would just be weird, Todd."

"Your face is weird," Todd tells him, because what else is he supposed to do, argue about what constitutes weirdness for the two of them?

"You like my face."

"Yeah," Todd sighs. "I don't know why though." He looks around them, more for something else to do. "Look, just – I don't know why you think you have to do that but...there's other options, yeah? One of these days I'm going to be in a towel or something and I am not going to react well, and it's not personal, but I might kill you."

"How?"

"How what?"

"If you're in a towel, how are you going to kill me?"

Todd looks at him. It’s sort of all he can do. "I'd still have my hands free."

"Really?" And now Dirk basically looks the most impressed with Todd he's ever been, ever. It's pretty insulting, like Todd's ability to not have to constantly hold up a towel is his greatest skill and contribution to not just the agency but also humanity as a whole.

"What did you think I was going to do? Whip you out of the window with my towel?"

It's at this point that whatever the fuck they've ended up talking about dawns on both of them at once – at least, Todd knows his brain is now going 'whip you' and ‘hands free’ and ‘in a towel’ on loop in a constant scream that's going to haunt him every time he tries to sleep from now until the day he dies, and Dirk looks like he's spotted a hole to an alternate dimension over Todd's shoulder. (Todd does glance backwards, but no, no alternative dimension in this exact second.) With increasing panic, Todd tries to think of _anything_ he could say which would erase the last minute. Like pretending to be replaced by a perfect replica – except no, that will just make Dirk freak out and that will make things worse.

"You know what?" Todd says, which usually works as a placeholder while he tries to hold the proverbial conch shell before throwing it out the window. "Just – do what you want. Or don't. Don't – Don't climb in through my window." He's pointing at Dirk as if this somehow makes what he's saying coherent. "Knock on my door, that's all I'm asking."

From the way Dirk's focusing on his finger, you'd think Todd was about to poke his eyes out. "Do I have to knock?"

"What?"

"Just, with the window." Dirk mimes knocking on midair, and because their lives are messed up Todd still expects to hear something. "I don't have to knock. I can just come in."

"That's – " a lot to process in a single statement, only with Dirk you really do just have to try to keep up. "Dirk, you should still knock. With the window. It's way scarier when someone comes in through the window and you're not expecting it."

Dirk hums to himself. "So if I came through the door, I wouldn't need to knock?"

"No, I – Why does this matter to you so much?"

To his surprise given the growing incoherency of all this, Dirk gives what sounds like a very honest answer. "I don't know. It just does." Normally that would seem incredibly unhelpful, yet Todd hesitates. Blame the way Dirk’s looking off into the middle distance and frowning like this is a genuine mystery. 

Call Todd an asshole – repeatedly – but from what he can tell, if Dirk's looking that confused, it means there's no logic to it. And not 'no logic' as in 'unless you assume that space is bendable and time is not a constant', but the other kind of no logic. The kind people write terrible poetry and worse songs about. As much as it makes Todd sound like some creepy nature documentary, the expression and the hesitation all suggest that Dirk is experiencing, well, an emotion.

Todd is a dude. He has no business recognising when emotions are happening. There's no way he's going to be able to identify one.

As if some sort of spirit of maleness descends upon him, Todd watches helplessly as his hand lifts in a fist and lightly knocks against Dirk's arm. Dirk, quite reasonably, looks down at it and then at Todd with wide and concerned eyes. "Um," Todd says, eloquently. "It's okay. You just – You know what, you do the window if that's what the universe wants you to do. Or what you want to do, that's – that's a thing. That's an important thing."

Now frowning, Dirk says, "Todd," and not in a way that's at all promising when it comes to Todd's ability to survive whatever he's about to say.

"I'll see you later," Todd says, although he's so keen to avoid any kind of conversation and get the fuck out of Dodge that it sounds more like 'Ilseulate'. Most likely all Dirk hears is 'I', because Todd is really good at just making a break for it when he has to.

\---

Ideally, that would be the end of it: they never speak of this, _ever_ again, and go back to whatever label best fits their brand of bickering aggressive caring and mutual aggravation. (At least, Todd assumes that it's mutual. He for one _knows_ that Dirk is the most frustrating person he's ever met and the thought that it’s one-sided leaves him feeling both incredibly jealous and unbelievably angry.) Really, it was Todd's fault for trying to assert some sort of normal world rule system on Dirk's chaos. He'll apologise for it, if Dirk ever brings it up.

There are plenty of reasons why Dirk might not crash in through the window on any particular night. Obviously they have cases, the kind that never have anything like recognisable working hours. There are also the nights when they crash out on the couch as Todd attempts to educate Dirk in films which aren't on TV in the daytime; sometimes Dirk follows Todd to his room, so sleep-drunk he has his hand holding onto Todd's shirt or his pants and this is the only way to guide him to a bed; once or twice they’ll be talking in Dirk's room right up until Dirk faceplants onto his mattress and Todd has to grab his mug before tea goes absolutely fucking everywhere. All the sort of thing that builds up, so that you can never quite remember what happened on a specific evening because there was nothing special about it.

Still. It's barely a week later that Todd realises he hasn't gone to bed yet because he's still waiting for the crash of a body through the window. Two weeks and he knows somewhere in his chest that this is 'A Thing', as Dirk would put it.

They’re going to have to talk about it. Again. Unless, that is, Todd can come up with some ingenious plan for having the entire conversation while skipping all the specific parts. He must be able to do that: he's a really good liar when he wants to be, dissembling and vagueness should be easy enough. (Wait, that's fucked up. This is not like lying.) He just hopes he gets Dirk on one of his more cryptic and less oblivious days.

He thinks about just going into Dirk's room, the way Dirk clearly thinks he can just go into Todd's, no knocking or anything. Then he remembers about empathy and seeing stuff from the other person's point of view and, yeah, Todd may shout and scream about personal space, but Dirk literally grew up in a government facility so he wins this one.

Todd knocks. And then goes in anyway.

Dirk is reading, which throws Todd off way more than it really should. "I could have been _naked_ , Todd." That sentence, on the other hand, is the kind of distracting Todd has just had to learn to deal with.

"You're not naked," Todd says, then pushes on before this whole conversation centers on the likelihood of Dirk being naked. (Todd can't decide whether or not the idea is distressing.) "My window's open."

Dirk frowns. "Then...close it?"

Okay. Too subtle. "No, like – My window. Is open."

"Yes, you said that already, Todd."

Dirk is really attractive and really dumb. These two facts are true at the same time and Todd is both enraged and delighted by both. It's a problem. "Dirk, _I_ am telling _you_ that _my_ window is _open_."

"That does indeed summarise the words coming out of your mouth, Todd, but I might need just the teensiest bit more info before – "

" _You don't have to knock if you don't use the door_."

They both stare at each other. Todd plays that sentence back in his head and allows that, okay, that was a mess and absolutely _nobody_ would understand it.

"Todd, are you feeling – "

Todd slams his door shut before he even realises he’s left Dirk’s room.

Stupid. Idiotic. Dirk manages these convoluted ideas that suddenly end up with coherent points because he's _Dirk_ , Todd is Todd and there are a lot of reasons why Mexican Funeral didn't get anywhere but his lyrics seriously didn't help. He just isn't built for this.

He fucked it up. He asked questions and he prodded and Dirk clamped shut like…like one of those sea creatures that does that when you poke it with a stick. The fact that Todd cares that he doesn’t know what those things are called doesn’t suggest anything good about his chances of getting to sleep tonight. Neither does the nagging eating sensation that this might have been something Dirk needs. Something Todd’s yanked away from him.

Maybe the self-loathing spiral could have gotten further along with the help of a restless night staring at the ceiling and reviewing his mistakes. It doesn’t get that far though: he's brushing his teeth, barely a few hours later, when he hears a 'thunk', some distant British cursing, and then the unmistakeable sound of someone hitting the floor. Grinning while brushing your teeth is not easy, and a mess of toothpaste ends up on his shirt, but that doesn't stop him.

Trying to rub the minty nuisance off the fabric, Todd wanders back into his room to see Dirk contorted on the ground. The tangle of limbs glares up at him. "You moved your table."

"I figured that was better than you braining yourself on the corner."

"It's supposed to break my fall."

"I'll stick a beanbag chair there or something." Todd crosses his arms. "You want a hand up?"

"No, Todd, I thought I would just lie here for the foreseeable future."

"Fair enough." Todd shrugs and wanders off to his bed. "Let me know when you're done with that."

It isn't long at all before he feels the side of the mattress sink down, and he rolls over to muffle his smile in his pillow. Considering why Dirk is usually breaking in, Todd can let this one go. For now.


End file.
